He was sitting on Mrs.Lane's left, opposite the Bishop, and the latter had started with his hostess a discussion of the relation between religion and art.

All went harmoniously for a time; they agreed that religion had ceased to inspire art, and that it was a very regrettable thing; and there, one would have thought the subject--not being a new one--might well have been left.

Suddenly, however, Mr.Morewood broke in: "Religion has ceased to inspire art because it has lost its own inspiration, and having so ceased, it has lost its only use." The Bishop was annoyed.

A well-bred man himself, he disliked what seemed to him ill-bred attacks on opinions which his position proclaimed him to hold.
"You cannot expect me to assent to either of your propositions, Mr.
Morewood," he said.

"If I believed them, you know, I should not be in the place I am." "They're true, for all that," retorted Morewood.